Dear Reader,
Word Raccoon was supposed to be thinking about verticals this morning before working on the Rebecca thread, but first she watched a refrigerator decluttering video while she ate breakfast.
This inevitably resulted in her standing in front of the refrigerator at not quite six in the morning, trying very hard not to clean it out.
She threw away six condiments.
I am calling this restraint, though she’s already cataloging all of the other condiments languishing in the door.
Anyway. Verticals. Have you heard of or seen these?
I first heard about verticals on the Happier in Hollywood podcast. Liz Craft and Sarah Fain have mentioned them more than once, and they seem to be having fun with them, and they have marked them as the next writing evolution in Hollywood.
Then vertical dramas started appearing on my YouTube feed as ads that I had trouble pulling myself away from. (Actually, now that I know what they are, I think maybe I started seeing them a few months ago.)
At first I didn’t even realize what I was watching. Then: Oh. This is what a vertical is.
Of course then WR had to download the advertised app to find out what happened to that billionaire high school guy with x-ray vision from birth who was in love with a young woman who didn’t know any of those things about him and he had arranged for her favorite YouTube influencer to also start going to the high school but she didn’t know that either and…see? See why I had to keep watching while simultaneously not caring, either?
I don’t know enough yet to say whether what I encountered is representative of verticals generally, but the particular story I watched was cheesy.
The story was cheesy.
The music was even cheesier.
Here’s the thing: WR kept watching.
No, WR couldn’t stop watching!
Worse: when she ran out of whatever portion the app let her watch for free, she watched ads so she could see the next episode.
Reader, they got me. I stopped short of paying money to finish the story (so far), but I’m still wondering what happens.
The episodes were tiny, maybe one to three minutes apiece, and every single time one ended, I wanted to know, as I said,
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
As a novelist, I’m also going “How did they do that?”
Because I can make fun of the melodrama and the music all I want, but if WR voluntarily watches an advertisement because she needs another two minutes of it, the story is doing something worth examining.
And then, wouldn’t you know it, verticals entered WR’s life through another portal.
I recently received one of those digital family calendars to review. Apparently all the cool kids with ADHD have one now. Mine has some limitations, including the mildly absurd fact that a tablet designed to hang on your wall must remain plugged into said wall, and you can’t simply download whatever apps you please. (That second part is probably a good idea, but the first??)
But it came with vertical dramas already loaded on it.
Hello again.
Completely unrelated but something that WR lurves: it also comes loaded with artwork, and you can take the calendar off its stand, hold it in your hands, and zoom in. There is something unexpectedly wonderful about holding a familiar Van Gogh inches from your face, enlarging a section, pulling back again. It’s obviously not the painting itself, but the change in scale makes you look at it differently.
Now WR wonders if museums could offer that sort of kinesthetic viewing of the actual, physical, artwork, but she already knows why not.
What does writing a vertical look like? How much story fits into one of these microscopic episodes? How frequently do you need a turn, reveal, reversal, cliffhanger? Who is writing them? How does a writer get hired? What does a script look like? And, perhaps most dangerously:
Would I be any good at writing verticals? Me, no. WR? Quite possibly.
I don’t know yet.
But I intend to find out. Unless I don’t.
Preferably after August, because I am supposed to be finishing the draft of a novel. Okay, let’s call September Vertical Month (plus the novel and poetry in the background, plus daily work, plus House Gorgeous. Yes, I’m preparing to be exhausted.)
Cleaning out neither my refrigerator nor my freezer today. At least I don’t think so. It’s not on the novel thread list, anyway…
Six condiments, Reader. So many more to go.
Drema